Thursday, September 8, 2011

Don't you just hate it when you find a recipe that you're excited to try out, so you take all the effort to make it, and it turns out great.....

..... only to realise that you never really liked that particular type of food in the first place?

Or I could be the only strange one who does that.

But it's happened to me a couple of times!

I was recently sent a copy of Baked and Delicious in the mail, much to my excitement, which came with a set of beautiful brightly coloured silicon muffin cups! I don't own much silicon bakeware (infact, I'm pretty sure the only bit of silicon in my kitchen is my silicon spatula!) but I love the colours! The magazine itself is formatted like a thin cookbook, with bright pages of delicious baked goods and detailed step by step instructions for some recipes.

There were quite a lot of recipes I wanted to try, but I was most intrigued by the Lebkuchen (German spiced cookies). The cookies contained an acceptable butter content (by my standards), and I thought the large amount of honey would make for a great tasting cookie.

It was only when I was halfway through making the batter, that I realised I didn't have enough honey so I did a quick google search of other lebkuchen recipes and ended up making a substitution of some sugar and an egg. The recipe I've included at the end of the post is the original recipe I had intended to make.

I was pleased to find that the cookies still turned out beautifully, if a little different to the pictures in the magazine. I coated them in chocolate because i didn't have any gold leaves, as suggested in the recipe, but I personally think that chocolate looks better than gold leaves ;) On cookies anyway.

What I wasn't so pleased about was that after my first bite, I finally remembered why I've never made spiced cookies before. I don't really like them! I shouldn't have been so surprised though, I'm often lured by the sight of tasty spiced cookies, only to be dissappointed by the taste. Whilst I like spices in cooking, and to some extent, certain cakes and desserts, spiced cookies are definitely not my thing. Which is a shame because I think they would have been really good cookies for someone who likes spiced cookies!

1. Mix the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, spices and orange and lemon zest in a large bowl. Gently melt the honey and butter together in a saucepan and then tip them onto the dr ingredients and m ix into a fairly stiff dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave the mixture to cool and solidify a bit.2. Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F. Use your hands to roll the dough into balls about 3cm across and lay them out on the prepared baking sheets with plenty of space between each one. Flatten the balls into circles with your fingers. Put an almond in the centre of each cookie and sprinkle with a few edible gold leaf to decorate. Bake for about 15 minutes until risen and golden, then turn them out to cool on wire racks.

Haha, the cookies look really good. Too bad you didn't like them. Did your family/friends like them though? I've never made something that I didn't like eating...I made stuff that I messed up on and didn't like eating. XD I love your pictures, they're so bright and pretty.

Good thing you covered them with chocolate. What kind of snotty dimwits cover their lebkuchen with gold leaves?! I'm German and can assure you that I have never ever seen them that way. Chocolate however, is probably besides sugar the most common glaze and makes way more sense, doesn't it? I'm not too much of a fan, either, but yours definitely look authentic. :)

I have done the exact same thing! I always think chocolate cake smells reaaaaaaaaaallyy good (brownies too) when it's baking, so I wait in anticipation only to take a bite and realise.. I really don't like chocolate cake :P

These cookies look delicious though! Last year I made Ina Garten's ultimate ginger cookies and they were delicious - super soft and chewy and full of christmas-sy spices.

I used to eat tons of these when we lived in Germany. When I made my Hurricane Irene cookies this week, I also used allspice powder but only put 1/2 teaspoon to a cup of flour so the flavor wasn't too overwhelming. You cookies do look great, though...chocolate corrects everything! :-)

Your cookies are beautiful! Lebkuchen are on of my family's favorite cookies - we eat them every Christmas. I've never tried making them, partly to keep the tradition of eating them only in winter. But this recipe will have to change that.

These cookies look wonderful, although I have to admit, as a child, they were always the ones I left behind when we had biscuits to choose from! I think my tastebuds have changed as I've matured though, as I love them now :-)

You have no ideea for how long I have been searching for this kind of recipe. I wasn't even sure what to google, I only knew the look of it and yours are just as the ones I buy at Christmas. I will try them, for sure. Thanks!